Linguistic Affiliation of Burmese

2 Overview of Burmese

2.1 Linguistic Affiliation of Burmese

Burmese belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Bradley 1997 classifies the widespread Tibeto-Burman family of languages into four principle sections based upon present-day geographical location and their reconstructed genetic relationships as shown in figure 9. Figure 9. Overview of Tibeto-Burman languages Of the major divisions within Tibeto-Burman, Burmese belongs to the Burmese-Lolo branch, whose primary geographical focus is in the area southeast of Tibet. It is generally assumed that the vast family of people and language groups derived from Proto-Tibeto- Burman originated high on the Tibetan plateau and descended into the East, South and Southeast via the great rivers of the region—the Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze rivers. These riverways formed the “interstate highways” of the ancient world, carrying refugees and wanderers as far away as northern Vietnam, southern Burma Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The Salween and the Mekong are at points a mere 25–50 miles apart running in deep fissures on their journey to empty into separate oceans. See figure 10. Burmese-Lolo Figure 10. Mainland Southeast Asia riverine migration routes Depending on which “river highway” a particular language group traveled, cousin members of that Tibeto-Burman parent language could have ended up thousands of miles apart at their terminal points—one in eastern China, the other in southern Myanmar. Similar routes were presumably also used in even earlier migrations by the Mon-Khmer language groups as they dispersed off the Tibetan Plateau, being pushed south and eastward by some unknown “cause” in Central Asia. The Burmese-Lolo branch of Tibeto-Burman is composed of two principle groups— Burmish and Loloish. This grouping of languages began to disperse from the Tibetan plateau about 3,800–3,600 years ago according to some estimates Peiros 1997. Loloish is also known as the Yi branch in Chinese, or Yipho adding the northern Loloish male human suffix. Modern linguists are increasingly referring to this branch as Yi. Bradley 1997, whose classification is followed here, adds two isolates to the major groupings of Burmese and Loloish languages—Ugong, a small, moribund language of western Thailand, and Mru, whose place and identity in Tibeto-Burman has puzzled linguists for decades. 1 The stammbaum of general relationships for Burmese-Lolo adapted from Bradley 1997:38 is presented in figure 11. 1 The problem of where Mru belongs is complicated by the fact that diverse groups call themselves Mru. One Mru language of Chittagong in Bangladesh is certainly not Tibeto-Burman Ebersole 1996. Another Mru of the Southern Chin hills appears to be rather closely related to other Chin dialects of the Palewa township Hartmann-So 1988. Shafer 1955, 1966, 1967 classified it as an isolate immediately subordinate to his Burmic Division, which included widely diverse groups of languages such as Kachinish, Luish, and Kukish. Figure 11. Burmese-Lolo branch of Southeastern Tibeto-Burman The Loloish branch of Burmese-Lolo is large and diverse, with most languages found principally in Southwestern China, Northern Laos, Northwest Vietnam, Northeastern Myanmar, and Northern Thailand. It is composed of three sub-groups, named for their geographical relationship to each other: Northern, Central and Southern Loloish. The Northern sub-group is composed of such languages as Nosu, Nasu, Sami, Nisu, Phula, and Kathu. The Central sub-group consists of such languages as Sani, Axi, Lisu, Lipho, Lahu, and Jinuo. The Southern sub-group consists of such languages as Akha, Hani, Phana, Sila, Mpi, Bisu, and Phunoi. Further detail of the genetic relationships for the Burmish sub-branch is symbolized in the stammbaum from Bradley 1997:39 detailed in figure 12. Figure 12. Burmese sub-branch of BURMISH The Burmish branch is composed of two sub-branches, a northern set of languages grouped by Bradley into Burmish and a branch simply labeled Burmese. These correspond to different waves of migration by the proto-Burmese from the region in China west of the upper Mekong River during the ninth century CE. The languages of the southern group, called Burmese, are all regarded in modern Myanmar as regional varieties of Burmese. The recognized Burmese dialects are: Burmese, Arakanese, Yangbye, Yaw, Danu, Intha, Taungyo, Mergui, Tavoy, and L. F. Taylor 1922, 1956. The languages of the northern group of Burmish are often identified ethnically as Kachin, a multi-ethnic confederation of widely LOLOISH differing Tibeto-Burman languages which incorporates some languages of the North-eastern India group. The northern Burmish group languages are found within the modern-day Kachin State of the north and in the Shan State of northeast Myanmar. These languages—Langwa Maru, Zaiwa Atsi, Lachi Lashi, Hpon, are popularly known in Myanmar as ethnically Kachin but are not closely related genetically to “Kachin,” that is, the Jinghpaw language at all. In some respects this set of languages is close to an older form of Burmese represented by orthographic Burmese from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries CE. The linguistic distinction between Burmese “dialect” versus “language” is not a clear, fixed one but is mostly left to pragmatic, political factors in Myanmar. What is clear is that apart from bilingualism a speaker of modern standard Burmese in many cases would not understand the speech of the other Burmese languages. These languages have only recently been linguistically documented Okell 1995. Phonological features of languages like Arakanese and Tavoy are well known for their retention of Old Burmese medial -r and -l, which are evidenced in inscriptional Burmese of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Contemporary speakers of standard Burmese generally fail to recognize and respect this antiquity, attributing humorous irrelevance to such speech. The languages of the northern group of Burmish, retain yet older features which the more southern Burmese dialects have lost, such as differentiation of syllable-final oral and nasal consonants. Such consonants are attested in written Burmese, but have been reduced in most Burmese dialects to glottal stop from oral stops, and nasalization of the preceding vowel from final nasal stops. Vowel quality changes have also been triggered by the erosion of the final consonants, providing a playground for linguists who have in the ancient written language, still in use today, a solid baseline for reconstruction.

2.2 Diglossia